Exterior Anxiety: Painting the outside of your house is a lot more than just picking a color

This Brainerd homeowner used Sherwin-Williams version of a color visualizer app to select several different possible color palettes for his home, which is now painted white with black shutters.

This Brainerd homeowner used Sherwin-Williams version of a color visualizer app to select several different possible color palettes for his home, which is now painted white with black shutters.

This Brainerd homeowner used Sherwin-Williams version of a color visualizer app to select several different possible color palettes for his home, which is now painted white with black shutters.

Andy Vincent, who has been painting houses for more than 20 years, lists three must-haves when it comes to painting the exterior of a house.

* Clean. Get all dirt and debris off the old paint.

* Dry. Once you clean it, which will definitely include water, you have to give it a day or so to completely dry.

* Dull. "Paint will not bind to anything shiny," he says. You don't have to sand the heck out of the old paint, he says, just use it enough to knock the sheen off.

Randy Wilson hears it all the time. Someone calls and says the outside of their house needs a new paint job because one or more sections have discolored or lost their luster.

When he gets out there, though, he sees the real problem.

"Usually, when they start thinking about painting, they see some kind of problem with the paint, but it's really the roof or the gutters, some kind of leak or something's rotted," says Wilson, a professional painter in Chattanooga. "When we go out and look at them ourselves, we check all those things and, if it's gutters or carpentry work, that's something we do because it's something we run into on almost every job."

Original post:
Exterior Anxiety: Painting the outside of your house is a lot more than just picking a color